Interference Evaluation in Cellular Networks

Interference in cellular networks is one of the most common problems in the radio access network. In fact, it is the major issue in cellular networks that affects performances and quality of service. Indeed, interference can be caused by a call on the same frequency from neighboring cell, or a call on an adjacent channel in the same or in neighboring cell. So, we can classify interference on intra-cell interference and inter-cell interference. In 4G, thanks to the use of orthogonal frequency division multiple access and single carrier frequency division multiple access as access techniques in downlink and uplink respectively, intra-cell interference is reduced compared to the inter cell one which caused by the frequency reuse one mechanism and the femto cells deployment. In this work, we will evaluate the interference in different cellular network standards from 2G to 4G.     

Special Important Aspects of the Thomson Effect

A comprehensive study of the mechanisms of heating and cooling originating from an electrical current in semiconductor devices is reported. The variation in temperature associated with the Peltier effect is not related to the presence of heat sources and sinks if the heat flux is correctly determined. The Thomson effect is commonly regarded as a heat source/sink proportional to the Thomson coefficient, which is added to the Joule heating. In the present work, we will show that this formulation of the Thomson effect is not sufficiently clear. When the heat flux is correctly defined, the Thomson heat source/sink is proportional to the Seebeck coefficient. In the conditions in which the Peltier effect takes place, the temperature gradient is created, and, consequently, the Thomson effect will occur naturally.     

Metric anticipation to manage mobility in mobile mesh and ad hoc wireless networks

In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), node mobility management is performed by the routing protocol. It may use metrics to reflect link state/quality. But, the delay between measures of the link quality and its integration in the route computation is very detrimental to the mobility management. Consequently, routing protocols may use lossy links for a few seconds leading to a significant performance deterioration. In this paper, we propose a new routing metric technique calculation which aims at anticipating link quality. Basically, the idea is to predict metric values a few seconds in advance, in order to compensate the delay involved by the link quality measurement and their dissemination by the routing protocol. Our technique is based on measurements of signal strength and is integrated in two classical routing metrics: ETX (expected transmission count) and ETT (expected transmission time). Validations are performed through both simulations and a testbed experimentation with OLSR as routing protocol. NS-3 simulations show that our metric may lead to a perfect mobility management with a packet delivery ratio of 100%. Experiments on a testbed prove the feasibility of our approach and show that this technique reduces the packet error rate by a factor of 3 in an indoor environment compared to the classical metrics calculation.     

The Twitterization of News Making: Transparency and Journalistic Professionalism

Twitter makes visible some of the most fundamental divides in professional journalism today. It reveals tensions about what constitutes news, the norms guiding journalists providing it, professional identity, and public service. This article argues that these tensions result from a clash between the institutional logic of professional control (Lewis, 2012)) and an ethic of transparency. Drawing from extensive research on a political press corps, involving observation, interviews, and analysis of tweets, this study witnesses the adoption of Twitter in the everyday working practices of reporters. It thereby also provides reasons why Twitter has been so successful in journalism. Tensions between professional control and transparency in journalism may, furthermore, be emblematic for divides in other professions today.     

A Class of POCA Distributions For rapid fading variations

Polydorou and Capsalis [1] pioneered the concept of POCA distribution to study the statistical behavior of the fast fading characteristics in an indoor environment under the assumption of finite number of scatters. In this note, we derive a comprehensive class of formulas for the POCA distribution to help better statistical modeling of the fast fading characteristics. The calculations involve use of several special functions and their properties.     

End-to-end delay margin balancing approach for routing in multi-class networks

This paper presents Quality of Service (QoS) based routing and priority class assignment algorithms. It introduces an end-to-end delay margin balancing approach to routing, and uses it to formulate a nonlinear optimization problem. In a single-class network, the formulation is shown to be convex; however in a multi-class priority network, it is only convex within specific regions, and is infeasible otherwise. A centralized off-line computation technique is proposed to calculate both the route configuration and end-to-end priority assignment. A gradient-based solution in the convex region and a heuristic to overcome the multi-class discontinuity are derived. An approximation of the optimization problem is developed for on-line distributed processing is then presented. Using the approximation, arriving traffic flows can use vector routing tables to search for routes. Compared with minimum-hop, minimum-delay, and min-interference routing algorithms, the proposed approach enables the single-class network to accommodate more users of different end-to-end delay requirements. In a multi-class priority network, results show that using the objective function to combine route and priority class assignment further increases the supportable network traffic volume. Mohamed Ashour received his B.Sc. (1991) and M.Sc. (1997) in Electrical Engineering from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. He worked for Hughes and General Dynamics as a Telecommunications Engineer. Currently, he is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. His current area of research is focused on traffic engineering, routing, and QoS provisioning in DiffServ and MPLS Networks. He is also interested in multi-class queuing analysis of long-range traffic, and QoS provisioning in ad hoc networks and satellite communications. Tho Le-Ngoc obtained his B. Eng. (with Distinction) in Electrical Engineering in 1976, his M.Eng. in Microprocessor Applications in 1978 from McGill University, Montreal, and his Ph.D. in Digital Communications 1983 from the University of Ottawa, Canada. During 1977–1982, he was with Spar Aerospace Limited as a Design Engineer and then a Senior Design Engineer, involved in the development and design of the microprocessor-based controller of Canadarm (of the Space Shuttle), and SCPC/FM, SCPC/PSK, TDMA satellite communications systems. During 1982–1985, he was an Engineering Manager of the Radio Group in the Department of Development Engineering of SRTelecom Inc., developed the new point-to-multipoint DA-TDMA/TDM Subscriber Radio System SR500. He was the System Architect of this first digital point-to-multipoint wireless TDMA system. During 1985–2000, he was a Professor the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of Concordia University. Since 2000, he has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of McGill University. His research interest is in the area of broadband digital communications with a special emphasis on Modulation, Coding, and Multiple-Access Techniques. He is a Senior Member of the Ordre des Ingénieur du Quebec, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC), and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE). He is the recipient of the 2004 Canadian Award in Telecommunications Research, and recipient of the IEEE Canada Fessenden Award 2005.     

Effect of organic/inorganic coating on moisture diffusion in a chip-on-board package with globtop

The moisture diffusion in globtop material for a chip-on-board (COB) package coated with SiN_x and silicone, respectively, or coated with SiN_x plus silicone were measured by embedding a humidity sensor in the globtop and recording the capacitive change in three different temperature/humidity environments. The experimental results were simulated by Fick’s diffusion law with finite-element method modeling. The moisture diffusion coefficients and activation energies were calculated to quantitatively compare the moisture-resistance effects of different coatings. For example, at 85°C/85% RH, the moisture diffusion coefficients for the uncoated reference, SiN_x-coated, silicone-coated, and silicone/SiN_x double-layered coated samples are 1E-5, 0.8E-5, 0.7E-5, and 0.2E-5 mm²/s, respectively. The experimental and simulation results show that double-layered coating with silicone/SiN_x has excellent moisture-resistance properties because it not only smoothes the steps on a printed circuit board (PCB) but also keeps the good moisture resistance of the inorganic films.     

Mechanical strength of Sn-3.5Ag-based solders and related bondings

The tensile strengths of bulk solders and joint couples of Sn-3.5Ag-0.5Cu, Sn-3.5Ag-0.07Ni, and Sn-3.5Ag-0.5Cu-0.07Ni-0.01Ge solders and the shear strengths of ball grid array (BGA) specimens, solder-ball-attached Cu/Ni/Au metallized substrates were investigated. The tensile strength of the bulk is degraded by thermal aging. The Ni-containing solder exhibits lower tensile strength than Sn-3.5Ag-0.5Cu after thermal aging. However, the Ni-containing solder joints show greater tensile strength than the Cu/Sn-3.5Ag-0.5Cu/Cu joint. Fracture of the solder joint occurs between the intermetallic compound (IMC) and the solder. The shear strength and fracture mechanism of BGA specimens are the same regardless of solder composition.     

Energy-Efficient Routing for Frequency-Hop Wireless Networks

The use of adaptive-transmission protocols in wireless, store-and-forward, packet communication networks may result in large differences in the energy requirements of the alternative paths that are available to the routing protocol. Routing metrics can provide quantitative measures of the quality and energy efficiency of the paths from the source to the destination. Such measures are required if the routing protocol is to take advantage of the potential energy savings that are made possible by an adaptive-transmission protocol. An energy-efficient protocol suite for routing and adaptive transmission in frequency-hop wireless networks is described and evaluated, several routing metrics are compared, and tradeoffs among energy efficiency, delay, and packet success probability are investigated.     

Simulation and design of a bandpass filter on metasubstrates

This work presents an analysis of the microstrip bandpass filter on metamaterial substrates. The filter is composed of two ring resonators with quarter-wavelength side-coupled sections. The filter input is provided, as well as the output port, using a quarter-wavelength side-coupled microstrip line section. Simulations by finite element method have been carried out to verify the effect of the metamaterial substrate properties on the filter performance, and to compare these results to those obtained considering isotropic substrate.